The language codes of ISO 639: A premature, ultimately unobtainable, and possibly damaging standardization

Abstract

009 Stephen Morey, Mark W. Post and Victor Friedman The language codes of ISO 639: A premature and possibly unobtainable standardization ISO 639 is an ambitious attempt to standardize and organize various types of references to the languages of the world. It is designed to be fully comprehensive and permanent; as such, it promises to greatly enhance the precision and reliability with which language materials can be archived, catalogued, and referenced in the literature, as well as the ease and precision with which such materials and references can be processed by machines and effectively located via search queries. There are, however, a number of serious problems with several components of ISO 639 as they are currently conceived. At a minimum, these are: (1) use of both The Ethnologue as the basis for ISO 639-3’s “three-letter codes” and of SIL as its registration authority is problematic for a number of reasons (2) in-principle “arbitrary” (but in fact not arbitrary) “mnemonic” labels of ISO 639-3 have the potential to enshrine offensive designations for language communities, and in fact currently do so (3) decision-making processes in ISO 639-3 are currently excessively centralized and privilege the views of a minority of the linguistics community (4) the in-principle “permanency” of language codes such as those of ISO 639-3 is fundamentally incompatible with the nature of human languages, which are demonstrably impermanent (5) the structure of ISO 639-3 has a serious potential to be misunderstood, misused, and in fact abused by decision-making bodies (such as arms of government in various political contexts) (6) ISO 639-5, which attempts to catalogue the genetic affiliations of the world’s languages, is highly premature, since there is nothing approaching agreement among specialists in a great number of cases (7) ISO 639-6, which attempts to catalogue language variation, is in principle impossible, unless it aims to extend to an analysis of the language use of every human being on Earth, living or dead On the basis of these observations, which we will illustrate by means of three detailed “case studies” from the Eastern Himalaya, the Burmese/Indian border region, and the Balkan region, we will argue that ISO 639 must be substantially re-conceived and re-organized before it can be supported by linguists. The language codes of ISO 639: A premature and possibly unobtainable standardization. ISO 639 is an ambitious attempt to standardize and organize various types of references to the languages of the world. It is designed to be fully comprehensive and permanent; as such, it promises to greatly enhance the precision and reliability with which language materials can be archived, catalogued, and referenced in the literature, as well as the ease and precision with which such materials and references can be processed by machines and effectively located via search queries. There are, however, a number of serious problems with several components of ISO 639 as they are currently conceived. At a minimum, these are: (1) use of both The Ethnologue as the basis for ISO 639-3’s “three-letter codes” and of SIL as its registration authority is problematic for a number of reasons (2) in-principle “arbitrary” (but in fact not arbitrary) “mnemonic” labels of ISO 639-3 have the potential to enshrine offensive designations for language communities, and in fact currently do so (3) decision-making processes in ISO 639-3 are currently excessively centralized and privilege the views of a minority of the linguistics community (4) the in-principle “permanency” of language codes such as those of ISO 639-3 is fundamentally incompatible with the nature of human languages, which are demonstrably impermanent (5) the structure of ISO 639-3 has a serious potential to be misunderstood, misused, and in fact abused by decision-making bodies (such as arms of government in various political contexts) (6) ISO 639-5, which attempts to catalogue the genetic affiliations of the world’s languages, is highly premature, since there is nothing approaching agreement among specialists in a great number of cases (7) ISO 639-6, which attempts to catalogue language variation, is in principle impossible, unless it aims to extend to an analysis of the language use of every human being on Earth, living or dead On the basis of these observations, which we will illustrate by means of three detailed “case studies” from the Eastern Himalaya, the Burmese/Indian border region, and the Balkan region, we will argue that ISO 639 must be substantially re-conceived and re-organized before it can be supported by linguists.